Billy Sims Barbecue Case Study: Tablet-Based Store Audits with MeazureUp
For this Case Study, MeazureUp interviewed two members of the Billy Sims BBQ Operations team.
Why was Billy Sims Barbecue tabulating store audits by hand?
Billy Sims Barbecue is a Tulsa-based fast casual concept serving premium barbecue and traditional sides, founded when Billy Sims and Jeff Jackson combined a shared enthusiasm for barbecue into a business and opened their first location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The chain now operates more than 50 units across six states and continues to seek multi-unit franchise deals.
Whitney Beavers, Director of Training and Compliance, has been with the company for thirteen years. She started as general manager of the single Tulsa location and her role expanded as the chain grew, first establishing operational procedures and documentation, then building a comprehensive training program for store management and hourly team members. Eddie Owens, Franchisee Coach, joined roughly two years ago after management experience at McDonald’s and now coaches restaurant teams, regional supervisors, and franchisees on executing Billy Sims Barbecue standards.
Assessments were performed manually on paper logs. Owens describes the cost plainly: hours consumed filling out forms, tabulating results by hand, and typing up reports to send to corporate management, franchisees, and store managers. For one location that is manageable. Add ten locations and travel between them, and it becomes a substantial amount of time and effort.
A 2016 test run with an assessment program improved on paper but still required considerable manual tabulation and manipulation, and was far from user-friendly. The team came across MeazureUp in early 2017 and used a complimentary trial period for a few months. As Owens puts it, they were now managing the store assessment program rather than the process managing them.
How does Billy Sims Barbecue use tablets for store self-assessments?
The app-based approach is the feature Owens values most. The chain deployed Samsung Galaxy tablets to every store, each one mirroring the PC in the store office, which lets store management run their stores on their own terms without staying tethered to the office. The goal was increasing efficiency and productivity at store level.
Tablets let store management and team members conduct MeazureUp self-assessments, photograph items that need attention, and set up action items for completion. Access to previous assessments helps track progress between visits. The team has also been testing a Bluetooth Cooper-Atkins Blue2 thermometer that integrates with MeazureUp, which allows full temperature checks in a fraction of the time and with greater accuracy.
“The data collected on food temps has been a game changer for us in regard to food safety. Extreme temperature trends alert us to either human error or potential equipment failure/issues.”
Eddie Owens, Franchisee Coach, Billy Sims Barbecue
What does Billy Sims Barbecue do with store performance rankings?
Compiling data across all store visits with a visual ranking of critical items lets the team identify negative trends quickly and act on them. A recent query listed the top fifteen failed items since implementation. To correct those, the scores were weighted more heavily to reflect critical and fail items, so that a “no” response on a critical item fails the whole subsection.
Ranking works in both directions. It identifies higher performing stores so the team can understand what those locations do differently, and franchisee coaches then share those practices with lower ranked stores. It also helps coaches find root causes at underperforming locations and build action plans that combine best practice with accountability. Owens notes that rankings genuinely motivate managers and franchisees: even as the team continually raises the bar on weighted items, the desire for a higher ranking drives performance.
Why does audit data matter for growing franchise systems?
A franchise system grows faster than any one person’s ability to be everywhere. What scales instead is the data: consistent assessments that surface which locations need help, which have solved something worth copying, and where a temperature reading signals a failing piece of equipment before it becomes a food safety incident. For a chain adding units across multiple states, that visibility is what keeps standards from drifting as the footprint grows.
